By MATT PIKE
Tomorrow Northwest Missouri State University will honor lives lost in the tragic events of 9/11
The university will host a stair climb at Bearcat Stadium, to give students and community members the opportunity to honor the lives lost on that day.
Coordinator for the Disaster and Emergency Management program at Northwest Travis Surprise says events like this are important to not only remember, but to help teach younger students
“This is what happened and this is a really bad day inside of our lives that we lived through and then faced the consequences, not with just losing the firefighters and the first responders, but just also the chaos that ensued afterwards with 20 years of the global war on terrorism and all the other stuff that came along with it and the changes to our policy,” Surprise tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “Basically, everything that’s happened now and in your life is somehow affected by what happened on that tragic day in 2001.”
Additionally, Missouri Western State University is doing a stair climb at Spratt Stadium tomorrow as well, challenging participants to climb the equivalent of the 110 flights of stairs found in the World Trade Centers, to honor the 3,000 lives lost on that tragic day.
Angie Osborn with the MoWest Military and Veteran’s Office says it’s not only important to remember the event for its history, but also for the way Americans responded by coming together
“There’s a lot of emotion that went into planning this event and trying to make sure that we’re honoring obviously all of the victims, but also all of the heroes that were there that day and continue to work on that site for months to come,” Osborn explains.
During the stair climb, both universities will do special thing to pay tribute to the lives lost during the attacks on September 11th, 2001.
Surprise says as students walk, the news ceremony from the day of the attack will play on the scoreboard at Bearcat Stadium.
“And it’s really sombering to watch some of these kids who have never seen this before, and even some adults who have forgot, to watch and be like oh man those feelings I felt were real and I remember exactly what I was doing and how I felt that day,” Surprise says.
Additionally, bells will toll from the center of campus at the four times planes crashed on that day.
Osborn says climbers at Spratt Stadium will carry a picture of one of the people lost in the attacks
“There’s a photo and it tells a little bit, a little clip about that person, and their age when they passed away,” Osborn says. “And then we play some music as they climb.”
Osborn says they will also pause at the time of each significant moment to talk about how America was feeling.
MoWest’s stair climb will begin with check in at 8am, the climb starting at 8:46 when the first plane struck. Northwest’s will go from 6 to 8pm. Both are free to attend.
You can follow Matt on X @KfeqMatt.
